March 28, 2014

"... who are using it to foment their isolationalist tendencies — and I think it is dangerous, really dangerous."Said Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, announcing that he will not run for reelection (and will move into radio).

Right, Mike ... we suck as really bad Americans because we don't want to let you put young Americans in boots on foreign grounds to perish in order for you to have a nice, expensive lunch in the DC Beltway.

These guys -- the "hawks", or, those in thrall to the military/industrial complex -- are losing credibility for the simple reason that they got much of what they wanted...and things didn't improve.

Specifically, Rogers is in charge of the Intelligence Committee. We pour billions of dollars into the NSA and whore out our best and brightest companies, debasing them to the service of...of what? What did the NSA actually *accomplish*? Can they stop small terror cells? No, we've got the Tsarnayevs doing their thing. Can they detect the strategies of big actors? No, obviously not. While Rogers sells out our people and our technological edge, what do WE get in return? He says we get safety, but we demonstrably don't.

In short, I think people are absolutely willing to sell their privacy or their very souls to cretins like Rogers -- if they get security and/or empire in return. But Rogers finds himself in the role of a whore who won't put out.

I'm on board with criticizing NSA, the surveillance society, etc., but at the same time, he really does have a point. As one example among many, try to understand the process and attitudes that allowed Thomas Donilon, a lawyer with apparently thin intelligence and security experience, whose longest professional stints were as a lobbyist for Fannie Mae (!?!?!) and as a legal advisor to Citibank and Goldman Sachs, whose brother is Joe Biden's lawyer, and whose wife was Jill Biden's Chief of Staff, to become Obama's *National Security Advisor*. There is no scenario where that reflects well on the Presidency or on the nation, and yet it barely registered a blip on the radar.

Good. Michigan can do better than this hack. Mike wants to ca$h out now cuz his kids are headed to college and he needs to earn. At least he isn't lobbying or corp flacking. Remains to be seen how entertain ing he is.

Not only did the hawks get too much or what they wanted post-9/11, they made some really bad choices along the way. And it needs to be reined in. To the extent it now can be.

That said, there's still something to be said about dealing with potential foreign threats before they become major hostilities, and that includes overseas involvements sometimes. But, what? How much? How far to go with it?

Conflating the intelligence industry with the military industrial complex is not helping. Putting more money into NSA, DHS, TSA and less into cruise missiles is not beefing up the MILITARY industrial complex.

Military is old-school and not sexy like internet sabotage, intercepting ALL the phone calls made in the US, and high-tech imaging machines.

Unknown -- I think that putting SIGINT into the military intelligence complex generally is correct. First, the general pattern is the same: the marriage of large, technologically sophisticated corporations with government agencies in pursuit of their own aggrandizement. Second, many of the players are the same. Lockheed, Boeing, NG, Raytheon, all are playing in SIGINT. Just because it doesn't involve tanks and (cruise) missiles doesn't mean it's non-military.